


may i feel

by anonstarbuck



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Vignette, ee cummings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-08 15:14:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8849908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonstarbuck/pseuds/anonstarbuck
Summary: A prompt shared by campaignofmisinformation. Ficlets prompted by ee cumming's "may i feel said he" ...which is MSR-y af:





	1. Chapter 1

_i._   
_may i feel said he_   
_(i’ll squeal said she_   
_just once said he)_   
_it’s fun said she_

**1997**  
The sprain was bad enough for him to have to pick her up and carry her to the car. After five years, it was obvious that at one point she would hurt herself running in her fuck-me-like-I’m-a-goddamn-professional shoes.  
He had swept her up, one arm under her knees and the other across her back and under her arm, hyper-aware of the fact that his hand was cupping the side of her breast through her blazer, wishing to a God that he didn’t believe in that he had bigger hands, longer fingers. He slipped out of the dark alleyway into the light and it felt like a groom crossing the threshold. It was the closest thing he had felt to being a husband in years.

Scully, more humiliated than harmed turned her head and pressed her face to his shoulder, embarrassed with her show of vulnerability and the wetness in her eyes. He tried not to jostle her and she tried not to wince but he felt her breath hitch next to his ear and felt bad for her pain, but mostly for wondering if her breathing sounded like that when she was feeling pleasure. How closely, if at all, these two were connected.

He had replaced his arm with his knee in order to open the car door and sat her in the passenger side of the Taurus. He kneeled in front of her and realised he might as well be praying or worshipping, and of course it would be Scully who would bring him to his knees. Of course. He took her shoe off, a topsy-turvy prince charming and stared at her stockinged foot unsure of what to do.

He stretched out his hand towards the arch and paused as if asking for permission. When he looked up she was looking down at him, a strange look on her face, one unrecognisable and barely surfacing.

“Scully?” he asks  
Her voice is soft and between his kneeling and a bizarre sense of veneration, he images he smells frankincense and feels like he’s in church.

“I think it’s just a sprain,” she whispers and he takes it as a green light. He slides his hand on the sole of her foot and gently touches her metatarsals and ankle bone. She squeals.

“I’m sorry.” he says, letting go as if he’s burned her.

She smiles and blushes simultaneously.

“It’s not that,” she confesses and he cocks his head with curiosity, half like a Labrador, half like a gun. She looks almost apologetic when she says, “I’m ticklish.”

He beams.

She’s right, it is just a sprain, and he takes her home. He’s too shy to carry her again and holds her up, uncertain if his fingers splayed against her ribcage had also made her inwardly giggle. He put his hand on her waist as he helps her hobble up to her flat.

She insists that he go, that she was fine. He insists that he stay because she isn’t, and makes a comment about shooting prized horses for leg injuries. She reminds him that only for breaks. He wants to make a joke about ponies but watches her settle on the couch instead. He makes tea, hands her the remote and some ibuprofen, puts frozen peas on her ankle and settles down on the floor.

They watch TV, but he’s thinking of the backs of her knees, the tendons in her inner thighs that connect to her pubis, the spot below her navel. He imagines the nook on her neck and collarbones, the space between her shoulder blades. It’s not the first time he’s thought about them, admittedly, but it’s the first time he’s wondered if she’d laugh were he to touch them. If she’s ticklish when you blow on them, but not if you use your tongue. He’d like to try.

He doesn’t know that she’s having very similar thoughts.


	2. ii.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (may i touch said he  
> how much said she  
> a lot said he)  
> why not said she

**2000**  
  
They drove in silence, Scully at the wheel of his car and he cradling his wounded arm like a baby rabbit. It was throbbing, but nowhere near as much as his lower lip, that still tasted of Scully and the promise a new milennium could bring. He hears her chiding that it’s not the new milennium yet and he’s still struck that her voice inside him no longer lives in his head but in his heart.  
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, and in the gloom, he could see the street lamps light up her face in tandem. He couldn’t decide if he loved her more in the dusky half-light or in the soft yellow glow. He also couldn’t decide whether the redness around her neck was 100% zombie or if underneath the bruising lived the remains of a blush.

They stop outside his apartment in Alexandria and sit still, neither wanting to say goodnight, the car thick with the memory of their mouths making contact. Scully, somewhat begrudgingly, breaks the silence.

“Do you mind if I go upstairs and wait for a cab there?”

Mulder shakes his head and chuckles softly. Scully would normally go upstairs, no questions asked, doctor him and giving brisk instructions of self-care that he already knows by memory. He’s amused but mostly thrilled at her sudden shyness.

“Please come up, Scully. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself before I go to sleep.”

He looks poignantly at his bandaged arm in the sling and waggles his eyebrows at her. His voice is deeper than he intentioned,

“It’s my good arm.”

The innuendo is not lost on Scully and she licks her upper lip nervously while stepping out of the car. Mulder follows and watches the way her ass moves in her slacks, and can’t help but thank the drugs for giving him this kind of leeway and courage, and her for progressively tailoring her clothes each year.

They sit on the couch and both make no mention that a cab is not being called. The sides of their legs are firmly pressed against each other’s and he’s grabbed beers for both of them, disregarding the fact that he shouldn’t be drinking on his meds. Truth be told, it’s good enough that he’s taking them in the first place and Scully knows it.

He turns to look at her and his eyes flicker towards her neck.

“Does it hurt?” he asks and she shakes her head.

“It’s just a little sore,” and angles her neck so that he can take a closer look. He doesn’t. Instead, he lays two of his fingers where he would normally look for a pulse and strokes the skin there. He imagines that he can feel her heartbeat quickening. He wants to believe that he can. He wants to believe it’s for him.

“Is this alright?” he murmurs and her nod is almost imperceptible. He places the rest of his hand on her, the heel on her neck, the rest cupping her jaw towards her ear, fingers brushing her earlobe. He feels her exhale rather than sees it, and turns her head gently until she’s facing him.

He leans in and stops right before his lips touch hers. He can feel how they’ve parted, just a little, enough for him to know she’s waiting and ready.

“And this?” he mouths at her but she doesn’t need to read his lips to know what he’s said. Her lower lip drops further. Her answer sounds like a plea.

“Yes…yes.”


	3. iii.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (let’s go said he  
> not too far said she  
> what’s too far said he  
> where you are said she)

**2003**

The motel is nondescript as is their most recent car and latest names. They keep trying to find each other through the little things. She chose the name Laura for this particular town, hoping to remind him of a time in their past when they were also pretending to be married.

She sits on the scratchy bedcover and regrets the face mask, the dismissive attitude she used to guard herself from the deep-seeded warmth she felt when they’d been playing house, that one case, once upon a time. She wishes she had allowed him in. Now they’re practically wed, marriage consummated in the back of trucks and in countless motel showers but she feels the chasm between them growing exponentially with every mile travelled away from D.C.

She can hear him in the toilet, trimming his beard into a goatee that at first had made her simultaneously cringe and laugh but that now seems to cover his face like a shroud. It has become a symbol of the distance being gained, the thick silences in rest stops and the dusty air of the never-ending road.

He has lost weight and his face has hollowed out and she considers what she must look like to him. She puts her hand on her now mousy-brown hair and wonders what her mother would think. A little darker and she would look more like Maggie, but the darker her hair the more haggard she seems to look. _Anything but red_ seems to be the rule for safety.

She’s trying hard and not take back her decision to go with him, but it’s getting difficult.

She dreams of her father with frightening frequency now. She stands where she watched his ashes being tossed into the lapping water but he is there with her instead, beside her, straight-backed and solemn while he reaches for her hand to squeeze it.

 _This is not the life I imagined for you, Starbuck_. She can hear his voice in her mind with a clarity and strength she hasn’t had for a long time. _I dragged you and the rest of your family around the world for years. But you had no choice. I was your father. It feels like backtracking, doesn’t it. Chasing after a man while being chased. I wanted you to sail forward, Dana, with the drive that I tried to instil in you. I wanted to be proud of you._

“He is my drive,” she had said while waking and had felt ashamed at the loss of herself.

He steps out of the bathroom, shirtless and in jeans that have grown stiff with use and lack of washing. She takes him in and loves him, painfully, from across the room. The pull of him is magnetic and yet anxiety-inducing.

“We need to go.” he mumbles and avoids looking at her in the eye.

 _It’s like fishing_ , she thinks to herself and hooks the bait by spreading her legs slightly and turning around so that she’s on her stomach looking away from him. She doesn’t need to see him to know that he’s growing hard. She doesn’t know if this feels more like an offering or a sacrifice. If she’s the lure or the catch.

She feels his breath grow ragged and herself get wet. His arm goes under her waist to raise her so that she’s on her hands and knees on the edge of the bed. The sound of his zipper is the loudest noise in the room, and he slides a long finger slowly inside her to see if she’s ready.

She always is.

He twists his hand around her hair, which she has grown longer for this very purpose; to anchor him, but mostly to feel like he’s reigning her in, so that he can dominate her into getting rid of the overwhelming need she has sometimes to buck him off and run away at full gallop.

She can hear the reverberations of his groan and the ache of desire at her very core pulses and deepens, welcoming him. He strokes her head, thumbs his fingers through her hair and she knows, because she knows him so well now, better than she knows herself, that he’s looking for signs of her red hair underneath.

He won’t find them.


	4. iv.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> may i stay said he  
> (which way said she  
> like this said he  
> if you kiss said she

**2001**  
He lets himself in with his key and breathes in Scully’s apartment– peppermint tea, vanilla, sandalwood and her. There’s a new baby smell and something like love tightens its gentle fist around his chest.  
He steps quietly towards her bedroom and thinks back on the last time he had used his key. He had walked in quietly towards her bedroom and had woken her up by sliding his head between her thighs while the coffee he put on the kitchen was brewing. This feels like lifetimes ago and it has been, in a way. He’s died since then.

He stops at the door to look at the Lone Gunmen bearing gifts and he can’t help but think that they look like the Three Wise Men staring at a saviour baby and its virgin mother.

He’s never felt more Jewish.

They catch his eye and say goodbye to Scully, leaving the gifts on the table still in awe that he had found her in time. When he tells them about the light that he followed, he grins inwardly and imagines that they’ve brought gold, frankincense and myrrh.

The thought is absurd but the sense of wonder is much stronger. There have been so many miracles, so many blessings gift-wrapped in impossibility. Scully’s return, her remission, his resurrection. Their son.

Hopefully this child, his child, is not to be the defender of mankind, and Mulder feels redeemed and reassured. He leans his head against the wall and tries to memorise the feeling, what it’s like to have warmth and love in his chest instead of anxiety.

Scully is sitting on the bed holding their son, and the raw beauty of it makes him want to cry. She subtly reminds him of an Irish tradition when she tells him she’s naming him after his father, as if saying _You’re a part of this if you want to be. You’re his father, he is yours and mine._

He stares at his son and sees her eyes, her colouring, but also the familiar dip of the lower lip that he and his sister shared. He makes her laugh, his son reaches for his nose and he wants to stay in this moment forever.

He no longer fears the possibilities and knows that the truth isn’t out there, or in her, or in the darkness. The truth is that he loves her and she loves him and he is holding their son while he kisses her while she reaches for his arms and closes the circuit. They’ve always been electric. Stimulated. Charged.

They stand and kiss like this for a long time, William between them, bridging them. When Mulder looks down at him he sees he’s deeply asleep, his little fist against his mouth. Scully gently takes him and puts him in the bassinet and when she turns, she looks exhausted.

He steps towards her and kisses her lightly on the nose while turning down the covers and takes her robe. She sighs contentedly and doesn’t protest. He sits by her and softly rubs the spot on her forehead where the tumour used to be. She wraps her fingers around his wrist and squeezes gently.

“Scully,” he whispers and her response is breathy and heavy with sleep.

“Yeah?”

“Let me stay.”

Her mouth quirks into the smirk she gives him when he’s said something stupid and doesn’t say anything, but she lets go of his hand and reaches to her left and pulls down the other side of the covers.

He strips to his boxers and crawls into bed, pressing her back against his chest, enjoying the feeling of her satin pyjamas against his bare skin. He puts his lips to her ear, the way he used to late at night, the way he did in Oregon before he was taken, and tells her he loves her, and that he loves William.

“Scully, I want to stay.”

Her eyes remain shut but her smile gets wider, “Mulder you’re here,” she murmurs and instinctively kisses the hand closest to her lips.

His voice cracks with the moving weight of the future, with the realm of all of their possibilities.

“Scully I want to be your. I want to be his.”

She’s in essence a scientist, but she knows his lexicon well enough to understand that these are not incomplete sentences. He means them in the possessive. He means them as in “always”. She, William and Mulder are the subject. The object and verbs are up to her.

She turns to him and nudges his endearingly large nose with hers.

“Kiss me,” she whispers, and he does. When their lips part she blinks sleepily at him, points at the dresser, and informs him that the drawers are his and that he’s an idiot because so is she.


	5. v.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> may i move said he  
> is it love said she)  
> if you’re willing said he  
> (but you’re killing said she

**2002**  
They were supposed to go north. The words she’s resignedly sighed at him for years ( _Mulder where are we going_ ) sound like a joke now. A “who’s on first” routine of the paranormal. The answer has always been a loaded silence, a shadowy metaphor of a sign marked “TRUTH” which ends up immortalised in her head and in her journals like orange spray paint and unmarked tanker trucks.

It’s cartoon-like, this relationship of theirs. She’s the smart, scientist Pinky to his obsessed, driven Brain. But now in Navajo land, they’ve watched the last of men burn and simultaneously free them, while turning Mulder into a veritable orphan. Family to him was always a shackle, a deadweight. For her, always a series of rudders tugging in different directions.

So, as if defiance was an act of habit (because god knows it is when it comes to them) they went south instead, watched the clay in the mountains melt and char before being rescued once more, and headed full-speed towards a brand new type of unknown.

Trust that the new beginning of her life with Mulder would be true to their past. This time not unravelling government and cosmic mysteries, but instead measuring time using the needle of speedometers, honouring the missing and the dead by allowing themselves to be in love.

And he’s right. He so often, so irritatingly is: The dead are not lost to us. They speak to us. The songs of our fathers can lull us but also give us the ability to save ourselves. That our sisters can be the source of guilt-ridden nightmares, but that they are also the soft voice inside us when we learn to forgive ourselves.

It’s like their first case all over again. He sits on the floor while she’s wearing a robe on the bed insisting that she’s in, all the way in. He shifts up to lay beside her, this time to hold her and swear all the oaths men swear when they would die for a woman or an ideal. And how often, if not always, these two are cut from the same fabric.

It’s cyclical without being full circle, the tattoo on her back has taught her that. She feels the simultaneous ache of devotion and the despairing tug of anxiety that so often swims in the undercurrent of love when it runs a little too deep, when the waters are a little too stained with blood.

The truth is in the space between them, in their middle ground where the bodies of those they’ve met along the way are strewn but never buried. He touches her cross, her faith, and she smiles in understanding. She rubs her nose against his and…well, maybe there is hope. Maybe it’s somewhere along the warm tangle of their limbs.


	6. vi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> vi.  
> but it’s life said he  
> but your wife said she  
> now said he)  
> ow said she

**1999  
**  
Most momentous moments with Scully, those that he runs over and over in his mind’s eye like a favourite clip from a video that isn’t his, happen in a threshold.  
  
Lifetimes ago he was carrying Diana through a threshold, wedding band shiny and untarnished on his finger, the buzz of champagne and newly exchanged vows electric against his younger, thinner skin.   
  
That time doesn’t compare to two years ago, when he broke past his doorway to stop her in his hallway and tell her, as best he could at the time, that he needed her. Since then, he has a slight aversion to bees and sometimes gets distracted by the memory of her lips parting right before he was able to show her just how much he needed her. He thought maybe he tasted her. Sometimes he let himself imagine that he had.   
  
Now she’s in his threshold again and his ex-wife is dead and all he can think of is her voice like a beacon of sanity calling him to her when the world was upside down. She’s upset and he wants to comfort her and tell her that he can mourn Diana without thoughts of mouth-breathing into a gun barrel. That had it been her instead, there’d be a Roscharch-like splatter on the wall made of his precious brain matter and the picture he keeps of her in his wallet would be clutched tightly in his other fist.    
  
“You were my friend and you told me the truth. Even when the world was falling apart, you were my constant. My touchstone.”   
  
“And you are mine.”  
  
In the threshold of number 42, she traces the lines of his face and the dip of his lower lip. He watches her staring at them, letting her learn the groove of his pout. He knows now that soon it’ll be his turn. He’ll press his lips to hers and know them too. Maybe in appreciation, maybe in celebration. Maybe both. Who knows what the new milenium might bring.  
  
He fights the impulse to taste her thumb with his tongue and watches her walk away. He can no longer hear her but it doesn’t matter. He knows that when she gets on the elevator she’ll lean against the wall and close her eyes and exhale like she’s held her breath for six years. In a way she has. So has he.   
  
He closes the door behind him but with the knowledge that the threshold remains open now. He gently touches his fingers to his lips, retracing her same movements. He closes his eyes and feels himself grow hard.   
  
He prays that recovery comes quick.  
As for him…he’ll take his time. 


End file.
